This is required listening: narrative non-fiction author John McPhee, one of those amazing old-timer-reporters (he started at the New Yorker in 1963) discusses his writing process in a recent podcast.
The whole interview is a delight — he talks about, among other things, when he reads his writing in his head versus out loud — but one quote in particular stood out to me.
Interviewer Blake Eskin observes around 8-and-a-half minutes that long-form journalism seems to be harder to practice today than it was in the 1960s, HOW VERY ASTUTE, and askes what John advises his non-fiction students at Princeton.
John replies, “as writers, I tell them that they ought to have a long-range eye on someday, in the near or far future, doing a book. And that all the writing that they do in various places that exist for them is in the form of development toward that.”
Got that, journalists? Good.
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I'm a writer and photographer in San Francisco, curious about how people can get away with writing all day while also being able to afford to buy groceries. 